Jem and the Holograms

Taglines: Every generation needs a voice.

Teenage songwriter Jerrica Benton and her younger sister Kimber live with their Aunt Bailey and two foster sisters, Aja and Shana. Jerrica learns that their house will be auctioned, and vents her emotions by recording a song using Kimber’s video camera that she uses to post blogs, but she uses a disguise, calling herself Jem, a nickname given to her by her deceased father.

She accidentally forgets to delete the video, and Kimber posts it onto YouTube, garnering millions of views in a single day. Jerrica and her sisters travel to LA because Jerrica earns a record deal with Starlight productions, meeting producer Erica Raymond and her son Rio. In the process, they come across a small robot called 51N3RG.Y (pronounced synergy) built by the Benton sisters’ deceased father, Emmett, which leads them on a scavenger hunt where each clue represents something Jerrica did or wanted to do with her father.

On the way, Rio and Jerrica develop feelings, much to Erica’s dismay, who signs Rio off to another singer. Aunt Bailey tells Jerrica via FaceTime that their house is going for auction in a few days, and Jerrica asks for an advance. Erica happily obliges, but she says that she wants Jerrica to leave her sisters and start a solo contract, which Jerrica signs thinking that she is doing it for the family. Her sisters soon find out about the contract and leave. Jerrica goes to visit the house in LA she used to live in with Kimber and her father. Her sisters end up coming back to finish the scavenger hunt with her, and Rio comes along as well.

Jem and the Holograms is an American musical fantasy drama film starring Aubrey Peeples as the title character, Stefanie Scott, Hayley Kiyoko, Aurora Perrineau, Juliette Lewis, Ryan Guzman, and Molly Ringwald. Loosely based on the 1980s animated television series Jem by Christy Marx, the film is produced by Hasbro Studios and Blumhouse Productions, co-produced and directed by Jon M. Chu and written by Ryan Landels. Chu had been interested in working on the film as he grew up watching the original animated Jem series with his sisters and became a fan of it as a result. The film was theatrically released on October 23, 2015 by Universal Pictures and grossed $2.3 million worldwide on a $5 million budget.